Why cancer cells change Gln metabolism?

Colon cancer is one of the most popular cancers both in males and females. A recent research demonstrated that some colon cancer cells can alter the metabolism of glutamine (Gln), a non-essential amino acid critical for various biochemical functions. Although it’s known that a lot of cancers depend on this amino acid to survive, the underlying mechanism is still in debate.

Can you graft human colon cancer cells to nude or PDX mice and feed the mice without glutamine ? will the mice survive? will the tumor shrink? A leukemia, I do not remember which one, depends on asparagine and tumor cells are not able to synthetize asparagine. So it is efficiently treated in patients with asparaginase since a long time ago.

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